Years ago, I found myself sitting in law school in Moot Court wearing an oversized itchy blue suit. It was a horrible experience. In a desperate attempt to avoid anything like that in the future I enrolled in a tax course. I loved it. I signed up for another. Before I knew it, in addition to my JD, I had a LL.M Taxation. I needed only to don my cape…. taxgirl® was born. Today, I live and work in Philadelphia, PA, one of the best cities in the world (I can't even complain about the sports teams these days). I landed in the City of Brotherly Love by way of Temple University School of Law. While at law school, I interned at the estates attorney division of the IRS. At IRS, I participated in the review and audit of federal estate tax returns. I even took the lead on a successful audit. At audit, opposing counsel read my report, looked at his file and said, “Gentlemen, she’s exactly right.” I nearly fainted. It was a short jump from there to practicing, teaching, writing and breathing tax.

First Lady Pat Nixon meeting with Big Bird from Sesame Street in the White House on December 20, 1970.gif (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Is Big Bird set to go on the dole?

It sure sounded like it during tonight’s presidential debate. When asked what sort of cuts he would make to reduce the deficit, GOP Presidential nominee Mitt Romney said that he would cut unnecessary programs, like, well:

I’m sorry, Jim, I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS, I love Big Bird. Actually like you, too. But I’m not going to — I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for. That’s number one.

So does that mean that this is the end of the road for Big Bird? Will Elmo no longer have any reason to giggle? Is Oscar the Grouch really going to be reduced to living on the street?

Not so fast. It’s not as bad as you think: PBS isn’t actually wholly taxpayer supported. A little context is in order.

The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is a non-profit public broadcasting television network founded in 1969. It is not a single entity but rather is comprised of member stations; there are 354 such in the U.S. Those member stations can produce their own content or air other programs. Certain programs are standard across the network which is why we tend to associate PBS with specific shows. For example, you likely know PBS from shows like NewsHour, Masterpiece (yes, that’s how the US grew to know and love Downton Abbey) and of course, Sesame Street and the Electric Company.

The original mission of PBS was to provide access to programming – particularly to those in rural areas and those who could not afford to pay for private television channels. I lived in one of those households which relied on PBS. I grew up in rural North Carolina and our TV service was spotty. We got PBS for free. We also got ABC and NBC on a mostly regular basis (thus largely explaining my mad crush on Tom Brokaw) – and if the weather was just right and if my brother held the antenna a certain way, we could occasionally get CBS. But PBS was how folks in my town watched television – especially educational television. I can’t tell you how many kids in my school probably learned to read watching episodes of Sesame Street.

PBS is not primarily funded through federal tax dollars. In contrast, it’s largely supported by, well, viewers like you (sound familiar?). Almost 60% of funding for public television comes from private donors or grants. Additional funding is provided by dues paid by member stations.

The federal funding that Romney was referencing isn’t a direct subsidy to PBS. The funding actually flows to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). CPB was created by Congress before PBS existed, in 1968 after the promotion of public media was noted “of appropriate and important concern” to the federal government. By statute, the board of CPB is to be bipartisan: three Democrats and three Republicans. As part of its mission, it supports not only PBS but also National Public Radio (NPR)

(And yes, I am well aware that all of these acronyms feel very much like an episode of Sesame Street…)

For fiscal year 2010, federal funding for PBS through CPB accounted for about 12% of PBS’ revenue. In terms of dollars, that works out to about $300 million. There’s not much wiggle room to be had: the money that actually goes to CPB is split according to a mostly statutory formula. For 2015, Congress has budgeted $445 million for CPB. That’s less than 1% of the budget. Way less. It’s about 1/100th of a 1%.

I’m not disparaging cutting waste: cutting waste is good. But with a deficit as large as the current one, if you’re going to focus on cuts, we should focus on real cuts. By the numbers, cutting funding for PBS won’t save the budget. Not by a long shot.

So will it kill Big Bird? He might need smaller digs but chances are, cuts to PBS won’t kill off Sesame Street and other major programming. What will happen, realistically, is that public television stations would have to find alternate sources of funding. Larger markets, like the one I live in now, would likely survive. But chances are that those smaller markets, like the one I used to live in, would have to shut off the lights. That is, of course, the irony, since those smaller markets are the very ones that PBS was intended to serve when it was created.

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In it’s heyday Barney brought in 90 million a year for it’s creators, yet the taxpayers were forced to still fund it. Since 1969 how many billions in today dollars have the taxpayers shelled out? If there’s a market for it, people will pay. Why would any rational person think sesame street would just go away? The weird and bizarre programs, the ones we all know could have no paying market, hopefully will go away. Is anyone else sick of these “The sky is falling” libs? If we knew the world was ending tomorrow the headlines would read,”World ends tomorrow, poor and minorities effected the most!”

It seems like an odd thing to use as campaign support, but I think Romney might be putting across even a larger point; to show the lengths that we must go to cut down our deficit. His use of something that almost all of Americans have watched hits to the very heart of our beings and makes us cringe inside. For many, the idea will bring criticism, but I think we need to be open to the idea no matter how much it pulls on our idea of fairness. In my opinion, Romney is right in saying that in order to get back on the right track, us as America will no longer be able to rely on tax dollars to fund the simple perks that we have always known and cherished.

The poor victims are whining again. Never mind that Sesame Street became a hit because it kept young kids off the street, and a “babysitter” in many homes while the parents were doing things other than parenting. Another work-around for avoiding the Capitalist philosophy that made us a great Country, PBS doesn’t rely on GM, Ford, or any of the thousands of companies who advertise on network TV. Good for them- I even enjoy programs on the station occasionally; but just because Big Bird is on socialist TV doesn’t make him the perp, and Romney doesn’t allude to any such nonsense. Just like welfare and school lunches, none of them will actually just go away but the truth is these programs need better management than the liberals who founded them have provide.

I have spent my career making factual programming for commercial cable networks (Discovery, History and others) as well as for PBS-supported series. Currently I work for NOVA. What most people miss in this debate is how PBS programming would be inevitably altered if funding were cut — in ways that those who like PBS and support and end to government funding may not realize.

I feel that cutting off PBS would help the U.S. bring the deficit lower, it would have a larger negative affect towards the U.S. population. As the article stated, Sesame Street wouldn’t necessarily be taken off air, but some of the 354 sub stations would have to be shut down. When these are shut down, those families and kids who relied on PBS for news and some educational services, will no longer be informed or moving along in their education as fast as others. I know personally that when I was struggling with adding and subtracting when I was in first grade, I used to learn from Count Von Count. Though we do need to reduce the deficit by a huge margin, I feel there are other government programs that could be cut. I feel that educational programs should not be cut if they are helping people learn and are effective.

This article is about Mitt Romney’s tax policy. Romney promised to cut taxes in a different way. The cutting in taxes will hurt the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which Romney doesn’t believe in its benefits. PBS will be forced to focus its services in big cities. Small towns population will not be able to watch the free tv and educational shows. This tax cut will not really help the economy since it is a very low amount, compared to the budget. However, it will affect the life of many people around the country.

I believe the Government needs to change its policy to help the economy. The way Romney is planning to cut taxes may hurt the economy and the American people in long run. The PBS helped many Americans to watch NEWS and Educational shows around the country. I believe Romney has a bad plan since the plan PBS gets a very low amount compared to the overall government budget. I think this is a mistake since it will hurt many families who depend on the free tv channels to watch NEWS and TV shows.

It is always an issue that how government use taxpayer’s money wisely, Mitt Romney said that he would cut taxpayer’s funding for unnecessary programs, like PBS. But whether it is really unnecessary should be depended on people not by governments. As I see, PBS has become the only choice for some rural areas and some people can’t afford for it. I think information and education is the most important for people these days, if PBS is the only way to help these people, it would be wise to use taxpayer’s money to support it.

Like you mentioned, I think the heart of the problem is politician’s unwillingness to roll out substantial cuts. Cuts such as the one above are not going to put a dent in the deficit. The deficit is over $13 trillion now and a few hundred million in cuts is minuscule in comparison. Traditionally politicians have been unwilling to make substantial cuts from fear of voter backlash. In order to make substantial cuts the government would have to cut federal pensions, military spending, and healthcare. All of these expenditures are highly popular among voters. The problem with our fiscal policy is that it is controlled by individuals protecting their own interests instead of those of the country they were elected to serve.